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"Bridge To Microsoft" Gets Federal Stimulus Funds
theodp writes "Among the first to benefit from the investment in roads and bridges from Obama's stimulus plan is Microsoft, which has $20B in the bank. Local planners have allotted $11M to help pay for a highway overpass to connect one part of Microsoft's wooded campus with another. Microsoft will contribute almost half of the $36.5M cost; other federal and local money will pay the rest. 'Steve Ballmer or Bill Gates could finance this out of pocket change,' griped Steve Ellis of the Taxpayers for Common Sense. 'Subsidizing an overpass to one of the richest companies in the country certainly isn't going to be the best use of our precious dollars.' Ellis called the project 'a bridge to Microsoft,' alluding to Alaska's infamous 'Bridge to Nowhere.'" A White House spokesman said this bridge project is still under review.
Unless it is a toll road which Microsoft owns completely, there is nothing wrong with using public money to build the road.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Public works projects as a way of recovering from a recession has never worked. It didn't work for the Japanese in the 90's, they spent 10 years building roads and bridges and wondering why nothing was happening. It didn't work for us in the 30's. And it will never work.
We need to stop listening to Keynesian and socialist economists who don't have the first clue what they're talking about and are trying to give solutions based on theory instead of what's been shown to work.
You want to turn this economy around? Cut taxes to 20%, max. Reduce regulations on small businesses \ cut the red tape.
The government cannot create jobs except government jobs, and government jobs do not build an economy. All government can do is get out of the way, and keep the playing field fair for the players.
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
It's Micro$oft!!!!11eleven!
Do you know how many american babies they will have to sacrifice per square inch of that road? /sarcasm
I didn't think so!
Hey... how about the view-point that Microsoft is actually paying for half of that road - which WILL NOT BE MICROSOFT PROPERTY ONCE BUILT.
Or... the fact that it appears that the community actually needs that overpass.
Easing Congestion
The city of Redmond says the overpass will relieve congestion on other streets and support a big employer in the region, though one cutting jobs lately.
Microsoft said in January that it's eliminating as many as 5,000 jobs, including some from its Seattle-area workforce of 41,480.
"This project is a mobility improvement for the area as a whole," said Lou Gellos, a spokesman for Microsoft.
An existing bridge a few blocks away is congested and a nightmare for pedestrians and bicycle riders, he said.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
"This project is a mobility improvement for the area as a whole," said Lou Gellos, a spokesman for Microsoft. An existing bridge a few blocks away is congested and a nightmare for pedestrians and bicycle riders, he said.
So, we have the relatively common phenomenon that commercial development has outgrown the infrastructure. Big deal. Usually the government handles this as part of its own work, without direct commercial assistance. In this case, MSFT is offering money to help solve the problem. They deserve kudos, not punishment, since they could alternatively be lobbying/strongarming the relevant government entities to foot the bill at 100%.
Even if you hold the (inane) view that MSFT should foot the bill at 100%, they don't have the authority to just build a bridge over any highway they want. So you need some kind of legislation anyway.
Bandannarama
Were this any lesser company, 100% of the cost would be paid for by tax dollars. That Microsoft is contributing half is either a sginficant act of generosity on their part, or a major triumph of democracy over corporate greed and corruption. Either way, it's a victory for taxpayers.
It was a similar situation when Disneyland wanted their own exit on the I-5 in Anaheim. There were significant reasons from the taxpayers point of view to do this - it greatly improved traffic in that section of the freeway, and throughout that part of Anaheim - but Disney still ended up paying for a significant portion of the cost. (In their case, it was a damned good investment in their wholly owned subsidiary, the city of Anaheim.)
Yes. Relieving the middle class of their cash through inflation and interest, and placing that cash in the pockets of rich bankers does have benefits. For the bankers.
For the rest of us, the national debt spirals out of control, personal debt spirals out of control, the dollar drops in value each year (all of these in a compound growth curve), while our wages increase in a linear, far slower fashion. We have less and less resources to deal with more and more debt needed to make up for our shortfall in income relative to the value of our money.
I'm not a Republican or a Neocon by any stretch, but Keynesian economics of "inflation" (or devaluation, as I prefer to call it) are not beneficial to the common middle class slob. They're only beneficial to the upper crust.
How is it MS needs to lay-off employees but can throw 36.5 million on this?
The state should not give tax payer money to a monopolistic company damaging the local economy by laying off people when clearly they didn't financially need to.
That's a lot of jobs. When you realize that some cities would fork over hundreds of millions in annual tax abatements just to get that many jobs, pitching in on a bridge is not a bad deal.
This is my sig.
Okay, twitter:
1) Microsoft still pays huge amounts of taxes to the locale so it is certainly not a burden. You can bicker about whether it's as much a boon as it should be but there's no question it's a boon to the city.
2) Why don't more MS employees live in Redmond? Are you serious? Where do you live where everybody works within 3 miles of where they live.
3) This "bridge" is not on private property. It's on public property. It's not only to serve Microsoft. It connects two points in Redmond that happen both to have Microsoft offices. It also benefits, for example, Nintendo and Boeing. And everybody in Redmond.
4) The 40000 people of Redmond should fund the basic public infrastructure of their city because that's the role of the government of Redmond.
Then the Ireland thing comes completely out of nowhere.
If you lived in Redmond, WA, you'd know why the article's author is full of shit. Try commuting from main campus, and with a company that has had significant expansion over the last few years, commutes are painful, streets are crowded, and traffic is always challenged either with going to or coming from work. There are traffic studies done ALL THE TIME in Redmond, and if you only felt the pain of the congestion in this small town, you'd know that MS didn't have to offer to pay for anything for this bridge, but they are.
However, a revised estimate of the cost was somewhat higher than expected. The City of Redmond (not MS) decided to ask for stimulus money to offset this. After some initial talks, Redmond chose not to ask Microsoft for additional funding until they had pursued federal funds, which were assigned. (Redmond did not make up the difference itself because it cannot afford it.)
This is not a case of MS pushing Congress into funding their campus development. This is a case of Redmond deciding the project costs were a good investment for the city, and asking for stimulus money to make up a shortfall.
Note also that MS is expanding its campus in a huge project. The overpass is a small, small portion of what the company will ultimately spend. This is good for Redmond's economy, and the city wants to encourage the expansion.
A lot of the time, 'bonuses' are simply a way for a company to take part of what they pay people (and, of course, only those who make 6 figures can afford to accept this) and delay paying it for 6-12 months at a time.
Some of it may be performance based - meaning they can tweak *part* of that bonus based on performance - but the bulk is really just what their salary should be.
All so the company can squeeze 6 months of interest out of part of what they pay some people. Seems more trouble than it's worth, but it's more common than you would think. There may be other benefits to the company too - reducing unemployment insurance and medicare deductions, etc. Not certain about that. And they can get more 'creative' with salary adjustments.